CHATTAHOOCHEE
(director: Mick Jackson; screenwriter: James Cresson; cinematographer: Andrew Dunn; editor: Don Fairservice; music: John Keane; cast: Emmett Foley (Gary Oldman), Dennis Hopper (Walker Benson), Frances McDormand (Mae), Pamela Reed (Earlene), M. Emmet Walsh (Morris), Lee Wilkof (Vernon), William de Acutis (Missy), Ned Beatty (Harwood); Runtime: 98; MPAA Rating: NR; producer: Faye Schwab; Hemdale; 1989)
“This period piece drama was emotionally flat, despite the gifted actor Gary Oldman in the lead role.”
Reviewed by Dennis Schwartz
Brit director Mick Jackson (“Volcano”/”The Bodyguard”) and screenwriter James Cresson base their unimaginative, predictable and dull film on the real story of Korean war veteran Emmett Foley (Gary Oldman, Brit actor). The real protagonist was named Chris Calhoun, and this is his story of his long ordeal while kept unjustifiably imprisoned in the 1950s with brutish guards and faced with squalid living conditions in Chattahoochee.
Chattahoochee is a notorious state mental institution in Florida with a bad rep, where the inmates are treated as animals.
On Valentine’s Day, 1955, the unemployed war hero Foley, suffering from PTSD, went berserk shooting up his Florida neighborhood after a nervous breakdown and was imprisoned in Chattahoochee because the prisons were overcrowded. His plan was to have the police kill him so his wife could collect on his insurance policy.
The hillbilly bearded Foley has a wife Mae (Frances McDormand) and a sister Earlene (Pamela Reed). In the prison he deals with the intransigent head doctor Harwood (Ned Beatty), who was against any hospital reforms.
With the encouragement of his fellow inmate (Dennis Hopper) he writes protest letters about the untenable conditions at the hospital to the authorities and newspapers until he’s no longer allowed to. He thereby smuggles out his protest writings with his sister. It leads to a state commission investigation of the hospital and reform of the institution, in which he takes a major credit for reforming the poorly run state hospital.
This period piece drama was emotionally flat, despite the gifted actor Gary Oldman in the lead role.
REVIEWED ON 3/11/2025 GRADE: C
dennisschwartzreviews.com